Days of Anger by Sylvie Germain

Author:Sylvie Germain
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0000000000000
Published: 2023-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

ANGER AND LONELINESS

THE BLUE YONDER

Who really cared about this Judge – Judex et Rex tremendae majestatis – the Judge whose most holy and just anger had been voiced in song around Vincent Corvol’s coffin? Who still feared him? As soon as the Requiem was over, thoughts of the Judge and terror of the Last Judgement faded amid the grey and amber haze of incense and candlelight – only the tang of anger continued to bite in people’s breasts, mouths and saliva, a strong and bitter tang that was most invigorating – the tang of human anger.

Victor Corvol had been interred. He had been buried in his ancestors’ tomb, unburdened of his penitent, mendicant heart and of his murderous hand. Back at Threshold Farm that same evening, Ambroise Mauperthuis had thrown these two bits of offal into the pig trough, without the least dread of that Judge whom Corvol had invoked throughout his letter. In fact he had barely been able to understand the letter’s solemn language, which he had laboriously deciphered, stumbling over every word, clumsily following with his finger the dense, neat, slanting script. He had only learned to read when he became the owner of the forests, so as to be able to keep his account books and to make sense of notices of timber sales, not in order to puzzle over absurdly bombastic letters. What he had understood – and this was enough for him – was that Corvol had had the temerity to raise the subject of Catherine, had dared to claim to love her and, worse still, made so bold as to ask him to place his heart where Catherine was buried. Such liberties, in Mauperthuis’ view, were sheer presumption. He had not pursued the effort of trying to understand this outrageous letter. One reading, no less laboured than furious, had sufficed. He had torn up the letter. Not only did he feel no obligation whatsoever towards Corvol – quite the contrary – but he considered himself entitled to infinite revenge and imprecation against him.

Claude had to postpone the decision she had so firmly taken on the morning of the funeral, to leave Oak-Wolf without delay, and return to live in her father’s house. Before she even had time to gather her belongings and pack her trunks, she suffered another bereavement, a bereavement that was more of a vexation than a grief to her. Marceau had hastened to answer the gloomy summons that the spirit of the dead had made to him in the church of St Martin. On his return, he had spent the night at his bedroom window. It was a clear night. Outside, in the middle of the yard, stood the huge, spreading magnolia tree. A still-warm breeze very gently stirred its long branches thick with broad leaves, laquered brown and green, that glistened in the cold brightness of the stars. And all around the tree, on the ground, gleamed its fallen blossoms, like a milky shadow of its boughs. There was no moon in the sky, only stars.

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